Month: August 2017

Online portal to login the webpage www.acla.org will remain open from September 1st to 22nd September , 2017 midnight hour to upload abstracts for the above-mentioned seminar theme.

ACLA 2018 ANNUAL MEETING IS at The University of California, LOS ANGELES (UCLA)in Los Angeles, March 29-April 1st, 2018.

The narratives recounting the shared history of post-independent nation illuminate post-colonial self-writing. ‘The Selfhood’ as a stakeholder, an educator, a learner, a facilitator or a precariat elaborates the confessional mode in the context of the psychological dimension and the actual experiences relating to displacement, resettlement, voicing the personality or understanding the authority. The ethics and poetics of self-narratives demonstrate historical consciousness for ‘unhistorical power of time and space’. The text and textualities of fragmented, discontented people set disjunctions and discordance and subvert timelessness and universality. While being in co-existence, they suffer from cultural conflicts and internal crisis. Even at times ‘subversion of selfhood’ grows writer to question genealogy of morals in order to hold oneself as a single entity, the truth of life is deconstructed as according to vulnerabilities of an individual. All categories whether belonging to hegemonic, minority, ethnic or an individual understand their emotions of connections with the past and their acclimatization in terms of ‘differance’. They filter their ethnic conflagrations to integrate their space of elevation, social experiential realities, to reflect upon their social environment and circumstances.

OBJECTIVES

The seminar will explore social criticism and the shared domains of private and public space in women’s text that nurture revisionist and individualistic engendered selves, the crossing-borders text in the post-modern era, the autobiographical text of exceptional lives, the narratives that illustrate an individual as ‘the exceptional others’, the postcolonial self-writings that not only script physical and metaphysical turbulence, but also contest the historical shifts and the notion of nationalistic outlook.

AIMS

The Seminar proposal will examine such narratives from the following perspectives: – How far do the political struggle and struggle with virtues affect the interest of the people who choose cross-threshold zones in place of comfort zones? How does foreignness or nativity transcend territoriality and time? How do the time-frames and cultural contexts employ implications in understanding the spirit of nationalism? How does the character or protagonist or the narrator in an autobiography cope up with the disciplinary boundaries and the historical/social events around which their life is built? How does the generic idea manifest selfhood, historical consciousness, masks the truth, deconstructs the vulnerability, conjoins differences, and implies the sense of ethical and pedagogical relevance? In what way does the genealogical methodology interlock ethics and poetics, text and textuality, when writing the ‘Self’ or underwriting the ‘Self’?

The Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW) was founded in 2000 in order to promote the study of American women writers through research, teaching, and publication. In support of that mission, the three awards were established in 2011 to honor the work and legacies of the Society’s founding members and to further SSAWW’s goals to broaden knowledge among academics as well as the general public about American women writers, past and present. As we begin preparations for the 2018 SSAWW conference in Denver, this is a call for submissions for our 2018 SSAWW Awards:

– Lifetime Achievement Award: The Karen Dandurand Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded every three years at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers’ conference to recognize a scholar’s career achievement in the study of American women writers. The award recognizes the individual’s commitment to the field, as demonstrated in his/her teaching, mentoring of students, scholarship, and service. The award is named in honor of Karen Dandurand, who passed away in 2011. She was one of the founding editors of Legacy and was an active member of SSAWW, serving as the Vice President of Development from 2004 to 2009. Nominators should submit a CV and brief (250 to 500 word) letter of support in one PDF file to the Lifetime Achievement Award Chair, Dr. Diane M. Todd, by January 1, 2018; the chair will distribute all nominations to the committee members. Please contact Dr. Todd at toddbucci@rmu.edu and CC the Vice President of Development, Dr. Christopher Varlack, at ssaww.vpdevelopment@gmail.com to submit nominations for this award.

– Book Award: The SSAWW Book Award is given every three years at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers’ conference to recognize excellence in the field. The award will recognize the monograph’s significant contributions to scholarship related to American women writers published during the preceding three years before the deadline for submission. Eligible books must have been published between December 2014 and November 2017. Edited collections and not eligible for the award. Nominators should contact the Book Award Chair, Dr. Caleria Gennero, by January 1, 2018, who will provide information about distributing submissions to committee members (those submitting work for the award should contact their presses to have review copies sent to the committee). Please contact Dr. Gennero at valeria.gennero@unibg.it and CC the VP of Development, Dr. Christopher Varlack, at ssaww.vpdevelopment@gmail.com to submit for this award.

– Edition Award: The SSAWW Edition Award is given every three years at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers’ conference in order to recognize excellence in the recovery of American women writers. The award recognizes an edition published during the preceding three years before the submission deadline. Eligible books must have been published between December 2014 and November 2017. Both print and digital collections are welcome. Nominators should contact the Edition Award Chair, Dr. Terry Novak, by January 1, 2018, who will provide information about distributing submissions to each of the committee members (those submitting work for the award should contact their presses to have review copies sent to the committee). Please contact Dr. Novak at Terry.Novak@jwu.edu and CC the VP of Development, Dr. Christopher Varlack, at ssaww.vpdevelopment@gmail.com to submit for this award.

If ecology is without nature, as Timothy Morton provocatively argued in 2007, then one may wonder of ecology without the feminine as a corollary. For nature, much like the feminine, has been fetishized, exoticized, and romanticized as a signifier emptied out—a sort of lacuna. If we can be at ease with the gap, vacancy, or interval and, perhaps, theorize about the unfilled space while sorting out the inconsistencies of what it means to represent nature, the feminine, and androgyny, then we might begin to trace the valuable contributions of nineteenth-century women writers to the development of the term oecologia coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 and beyond.

Gendered Ecologies and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers invites article-length typescripts (e.g., abstracts and/or 15-20 page drafts) that consider the spaces and places women writers have occupied as part of gendering the term ecology—whether masculine, feminine, or androgynous. Indeed, examples may span from Dorothy Wordsworth’s gendering of nature and the floating island as feminine to Susan Fenimore Cooper’s keen observations of flora and fauna in Rural Hours to Margaret Fuller’s “ecology of self” in Summer on the Lakes to Octavia Hill’s preservationist action in the Lake District among many other women writers. The edition will feature three guiding principles: transhistorical, transatlantic, and transcorporeality (Alaimo, Bodily Natures, 2010). Topics may include:

Feminist Political Ecologies and Built Environments:
*Ecofeminism vs. Ecopaternalism
*Nineteenth-Century Girlhood and Ecological Spaces
*Feminist Philosophy and the Biology of Gender
*Ecology and anarcha-Feminisms in the Nineteenth Century
*Racialized Ecologies and Gender

Submissions must include the paper title, abstract (200 words), c.v., and, preferably, a 15-20 page typescript sent to murphyj@union.edu and dwhall@cpp.edu by 8.31.17 for consideration. If accepted, then completed typescript aligned closely with the scope of the edition will be due by 1.15.18. Submit unpublished writing that will address the cfp directly.

The C19 Podcast has launched its first season! Please listen, subscribe, and review. You can write to us or share your thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag #C19Podcast. We invite proposals for future episodes; I have attached the latest version of our CFP.

“Climate” is the theme and keyword for the Fifth Biennial C19 Conference located at Albuquerque, New Mexico on March 22-25 2018. For our inaugural episode, members of the C19 Podcast team interviewed the organizers of the upcoming conference. Hester Blum (Penn State), Jesse Aleman (UNM), and Carrie Bramen (SUNY Buffalo) share insights about the ideas behind the conference, as well as suggestions for potential conference attendees. The CFP deadline is September 15. Written and produced by Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego), Melissa Gniadek (UToronto), and Kristie Schlauraff (Villanova).

Made possible by the C19 Podcast Subcommittee and Communications Committee.

“I am proud to finally unveil the C19 Podcast! We aspire to bring the insightful voices of the C19 community to public humanities podcasting at this moment that calls for critical and nuanced takes on the long nineteenth-century United States. This initiative is the result of over half a year of work by an amazing team dedicated to building the project from the ground up. The podcast is intended to serve our community as an accessible platform for participation and public outreach regardless of rank or level of technical experience. I do not speak of this inclusive vision lightly: I came to podcasting when I was struggling to find my own voice and place as an ABD graduate student and a woman of color in academia. The podcasting renaissance has offered myself and many others an occasion for the development of new skills, often self-taught, but more importantly, opportunities for self-exploration, collaboration, and solidarity. The C19 Podcast team consists primarily of junior, untenured scholars; I highlight our composition as a reflection of the shared passion of our field along with the structural challenges of the profession. In this spirit, we invite you to tune into this venture that seeks to be local and transnational in scope, scholarly rigorous in content but informally entertaining in tone, and both innovative in, and attentive to, the manifold considerations of the past, present, and future of our field in the world. Our first season showcases a talented range of scholars presenting episodes on fascinating topics – for many, this is their first podcasting experience. May these episodes energize you at the start of the academic year and continue to revitalize you as a listener thereafter. We hope you will be inspired to add your voice to the rich and polyphonic community amplified by the C19 Podcast.

CFP: SSAWW Panel at the College Language Association Convention, April 2018

Hosted by DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois

“Rewrit[ing] the American Literary Landscape”: Immigrant American Women Writers across the Diaspora and Tales of Black Metropolitan Life

Overview

In the introduction to her 2002 text, Rereading the Harlem Renaissance, Sharon Lynette Jones, Professor of English at Wright State University, calls attention to the influx of immigrants into the Black metropolis with “blacks from Africa, the Caribbean, and other regions of the United States migrat[ing] to Harlem in search of the American Dream of economic prosperity and equality, often to find that the dream was elusive” (2). Despite being faced with a tense racial climate that limited the social, economic, and political opportunities afforded ethnic minorities, however, the nation’s arriving immigrants fundamentally transformed cities nationwide into epicenters of unprecedented artistic and cultural growth that forever shaped not only the literary landscape but the very notion of what constitutes the American identity. Eager to explore these critical issues in the works of a diverse range of American women writers, the Society for the Study of American Women Writers is pleased to invite proposals for a SSAWW-sponsored panel to be held at the College Language Association Convention in Chicago from April 4 to 7, 2018.

Topics for Consideration

Because of their role in expanding the ethnic diversity of the United States and contributing to the urban artistic revival nationwide, immigrant American women writers across the African diaspora have played a particularly vital role in the American literary and cultural traditions. This panel will therefore ask participants to consider the unique experience of such immigrant women or writers in the city. Presenters, for instance, might explore social, cultural, racial, and political challenges that such women had to overcome in order to survive in a society where women “sometimes faced the triple jeopardy of race, class, and gender oppression” (Jones 2). How did these women not only help “rewrite the American literary landscape” (2) but also paint a fundamentally new picture of American life—one that recognizes the multicultural mosaic emerging in the city, as they share their traditions and cultural backgrounds with the world? Presenters are asked to consider the works of authors including Paule Marshall, Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, and NoViolet Bulawayo to name a few, as they develop proposals for what is sure to be an intellectually-stimulating panel at the 2018 CLA Convention.

The deadline for proposals this year will be September 8, 2017. Please submit a 250- to 500-word abstract and a brief CV (no more than two pages) that includes rank/status (e.g. ABD, Associate Professor, etc.), institutional affiliation (independent scholars are encouraged to submit proposals as well), and past conference presentations. Proposals should be submitted to the SSAWW Vice President of Development, Christopher Allen Varlack, at ssaww.vpdevelopment@gmail.com and note “SSAWW at CLA Proposal” in the E-mail subject line. All proposals should be included as an attachment, preferably as a single PDF document. Confirmation of receipt will be sent within two business days of submission.

While interested participants do not need to be members of SSAWW to submit a proposal for the aforementioned panel, all presenters must be members of SSAWW and the College Language Association by February 1, 2018 in order to participate in this panel. For more information about SSAWW or CLA, please visit ssawwnew.wordpress.com or clascholars.org respectively.

The Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW) was founded in 2000 in order to promote the study of American women writers through research, teaching, and publication. In support of that mission, the three awards were established in 2011 to honor the work and legacies of the Society’s founding members and to further SSAWW’s goals to broaden knowledge among academics as well as the general public about American women writers, past and present. As we begin preparations for the 2018 SSAWW conference in Denver, the time has arrived once again to solicit volunteers to read for our 2018 Awards:

– Lifetime Achievement Award: The Karen Dandurand Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded every three years at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers’ conference to recognize a scholar’s career achievement in the study of American women writers. The award recognizes the individual’s commitment to the field, as demonstrated in his/her teaching, mentoring of students, scholarship, and service. The award is named in honor of Karen Dandurand, who passed away in 2011. She was one of the founding editors of Legacy and was an active member of SSAWW, serving as the Vice President of Development from 2004 to 2009. Five readers are needed to evaluate nominations for this award.

– Book Award: The SSAWW Book Award is given every three years at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers’ conference to recognize excellence in the field. The award will recognize the monograph’s significant contributions to scholarship related to American women writers published during the preceding three years before the deadline for submission. Eligible books must have been published between December 2014 and November 2017. Edited collections and not eligible for the award. Three readers will be needed to evaluate nominations for this award.

– Edition Award: The SSAWW Edition Award is given every three years at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers’ conference in order to recognize excellence in the recovery of American women writers. The award recognizes an edition published during the preceding three years before the submission deadline. Eligible books must have been published between December 2014 and November 2017. Both print and digital collections are welcome. Three readers will be needed to evaluate nominations for this award.

Ideally, readers will represent SSAWW’s range of scholars and scholarship and be available to read submissions during a seven-month period between the closing date for the awards: January 1, 2018 and August 4, 2018. Award recipients will be announced at SSAWW’s 2018 conference. Note that readers for awards (including the VP of Development) are not eligible to submit their own work for consideration of a 2018 award in which they are directly involved.

If you are interested in serving as a reader for one of the following awards, please contact the VP of Development, Christopher Allen Varlack, at ssaww.vpdevelopment@gmail.com by August 18, 2017. In the E-mail, please note the award that you would like to read for, your area(s) of specialty,

and academic rank (independent scholars are always welcome to serve). In addition, provide a PDF copy of your CV. If you have any questions, please let him know.

This workshop, organized by Dr. Mary Chapman (Department of English, University of British Columbia) will be attended by graduate students and professors from UBC and other universities in the Pacific Northwest.

The SSAWW, one of the oldest feminist literary scholarly associations in North America, has been hosting semi-annual workshops/reading group meetings since the 1980s. Since its founding, regional chapters (Northeast, Southwest, Pacific Northwest) have been established that also meet twice yearly to discuss new scholarship and newly recovered literary works by American women writers. This will be the first time that any of these groups will meet in Canada.

This meeting will be devoted to a discussion of the work of Ella Rhoads Higginson (1862-1940), guided by invited scholar Dr. Laura Laffrado (Western Washington University).

The first prominent literary author from the Pacific Northwest, Higginson has been largely forgotten as a key American writer. At the turn from the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, readers across the continent were introduced to the remote Pacific Northwest region (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, and Alaska) by Higginson’s descriptions of majestic mountains, vast forests, and scenic waters, as well as her explorations of indigenous cultures and culture of the Pacific Northwest. Higginson was celebrated for her award-winning popular fiction, nonfiction, and lyric poetry, which was set to music and performed internationally. She held the distinguished position as the first Poet Laureate of Washington State. Throughout her literary career, Higginson published nearly one thousand works in leading magazines and newspapers, while also writing books, including the novel Mariella, of Out-West(1902) and the nonfiction work Alaska, the Great Country (1908). Higginson’s reputation faded chiefly due to her singular position as a turn-of-the-century writer of the Pacific Northwest, far from other regions and writers at the time.

Thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and UBC’s Faculty of Arts for their support of this workshop.